This innovative text explores the unprecedented changes in the realms of politics, demography, economics, culture, knowledge, and kinship that women have brought about in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Global in reach, the book provides a comparative analysis of developments worldwide to show both progress as well as new tensions and forms of inequality that have emerged out of women’s entry into politics, wage employment, education, and the production of culture. Beginning with suffrage and moving to participation in international movements—such as anti-war, labor, and environmental rights activism—Maria Bucur explores how women have transformed the operation of states and international institutions. She focuses on the radical demographic shifts since 1900 through the prism of changing practices in women’s sexuality, from birth control practices to education. Examining the continuing economic gender gap around the world, Bucur highlights ways women have been both beneficiaries of new economic opportunities and participants in developing new forms of inequality. Considering the remarkable achievements of women in the areas of knowledge making and cultural production, the author shifts her gaze toward the future and what these changes mean in terms of gender norms and evolving kinship relations. She thus presents a new perspective on contemporary world history, centered on how women have become both the subjects and objects of seismic shifts in the political, social, and economic structures of societies across the globe.

Examines how and why American women voted since the Nineteenth Amendment was ratified in 1920.

A distinguished social and feminist historian chronicles the dramatic changes that have taken place in the lives of American and British women over the course of the last one hundred years, explaining how women have shaped the twentieth century and featuring essays on topics ranging from lesbian culture to Barbie dolls.

The one hundred most influential people of the twentieth century, as selected by the editors of Time magazine and featured in a series of documentaries produced by CBS.

Volume 3 has some references to homosexuality and lesbianism in the index. -- dm.